How will Giants fill gap in left field?

Brandon Belt, who finished 14th in the NL with an .841 OPS, stands to get a hefty raise from the $531,500 he made last season.(AP)

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SAN FRANCISCO – There’s always a flurry of activity and discussion leading up to the non-tender date, and this year is no exception.

The Giants must tender contracts to players with less than six years of service time by 9 p.m. PST Monday or allow them to become free agents. Generally, the only players who aren’t tendered are arbitration-eligible guys deemed too expensive to keep or not worth the salaries they would command.

The only one of those five that could be cut loose is Abreu, who couldn’t stay on the field last season because of knee issues. The Giants spent most of the year coaxing him along, hoping he could be a threat off the bench and win a larger role on the club. It never materialized, as the 29-year-old switch-hitter batted .268/.301/.442 with two home runs in 53 games (138 at-bats).

Abreu made barely over the league minimum last year and doesn’t have the career numbers to warrant a big salary as a first-year arbitration guy. So it’s not like he’d be expensive to keep.

As for the Giants’ other four arbitration-eligible players, you can bet they will tender contracts to Belt, Blanco and Petit. There’s no reason to believe they won’t do the same with Arias.

Belt, who finished 14th in the NL with an .841 OPS, stands to get a hefty raise from the $531,500 he made last season. To put Belt’s OPS in perspective, it was higher than players like Carlos Beltran, Jay Bruce, Yadier Molina, Justin Upton, Adrian Gonzalez, and yes, Hunter Pence and Buster Posey, too.

Expect Belt to receive a salary in the $2-3 million range, with the likelihood that a multiyear deal will be discussed in the spring.